Mancini plays (proper) football

[persvenality cult]

I can't believe that a manager who buys Adam Johnson is going to be intent on playing dour football.
Look at the players he is buying now. All very capable of going forward, Toure did it at Barca, Silva at Valencia nd Boatang has recently been doing it for Germany. We need an attacking force but we also need a strong defence. I for one think he is getting the balance sorted out.

The only problem with that statement is that AJ wasn't a Mancini buy. He was pursued and ultimately acquired by Brian Marwood. Same thing with Yaya Toure, he was a long time target, prior to Bobby coming here.

quite unsubstantiated on both counts. it's too easy to say, 'oh but he was such and such's target' without any evidence. Mancini obviously didn't come up with Johnson's name but he did get a really good look at him first hand before the deal went through. and he used him in every single game... several other deals supposedly linked to Marwood or Kidd didn't happen.

That being said, I think he'll be aiming to use a 4-1-2-1-2 or 4-2-3-1 formation which should allow the more creative players to move forward. Problem is that this formation requires some really good fullbacks which we don't have at the moment. I'm not sure Boateng will be a first choice right away. Boateng has even stated that Mancini figured it would take him several months to adjust to playing in the premier league.

-- Mon Jul 05, 2010 1:36 pm --

The problem last season was that Mancini was trying to grind out 1-0 results with a team that wasnt really capable of doing that. If a manager goes down that route he has to succeed, fans will tolerate dull football but only if it produces results.

Mancini was criticised for packing the midfield with defensive midfield players but in reality he didnt have a lot of choice. The signings so far, particularly Silva, and those in the pipeline should allow us to play effectively the way Mancini wants to.

Can't say I agree with this line, and especially in the premier league. Unless we actually win the league playing boring defensive football you are always going to have people who will call this stuff crap. If Mancini resorts to this type of play with the squad at his disposal next season, I'm sure the questions about his suitability as manager will only increase.

It reminds me of the New Jersey Devils in the NHL who won a few Stanley Cups playing the "Neutral Zone" trap and were accussed of ruining the sport for everyone else. The hockey was so dull and boring that even the league threatened to outlaw it's use.

LOL. Drama.

cmon, we're nowhere near that bad, not even close to Chelsea in Mourinho's last two seasons, let alone Arsenal in the bad old days.... last season, I don't think we were close to being amongst the worse in the league... not even the worse in the top half. I accept we were more defensive than most, but I think people have unrealistic expectations. With odd exceptions, league matches between top four teams are nearly always complete snooze-fests. The big creative/explosive players are targeted and shut out.

Nobody plays attractive attacking football all the time. Arsenal try to play attractive football, but it doesn't work as often as you might think, they drive their fans nuts because 'they aren't direct enough'. what wins you the game, and is pleasing on the eye one week, is a horror-show the next, and the reason you didn't win.

This season, Utd absolutely stank for a couple of months. Villa's football was mindless, their fans detested it. Liverpool were just horrible to watch. Chelsea have been very poor to watch on several occasions. Even under Hughes, on several occasions we absolutely bombed in possession, and there were quite a few times where we never got going until we went behind. It's just not possible to please everyone all the time.

 

[yerwot?]

Mancini is like Mourinho. they wants to win.

Who wants to see a show and have fun have to go to the circus.

cheaper to come on here,and there are more clowns

 

[bluemanc]

Mancini is like Mourinho. they wants to win.

Who wants to see a show and have fun have to go to the circus.

Mancini is fuck all like Mourinho,Mancini failed & 1 win out of the last 5 games is just the tip of his failure BUT the owner has made his choice so everyone has to live with it that's the bottom line,rubbish like he is similar in some way to the special one is way off the mark.

 

[IrishMacca]

I couldn't care less whether the football is so bad that it puts the entire stadium to sleep once we win games. Can't see why people, especially when you look at where we've been, has a problem with the football being played, once the result is there.

 

[macmanson]

The only problem with that statement is that AJ wasn't a Mancini buy. He was pursued and ultimately acquired by Brian Marwood. Same thing with Yaya Toure, he was a long time target, prior to Bobby coming here.

quite unsubstantiated on both counts. it's too easy to say, 'oh but he was such and such's target' without any evidence. Mancini obviously didn't come up with Johnson's name but he did get a really good look at him first hand before the deal went through. and he used him in every single game... several other deals supposedly linked to Marwood or Kidd didn't happen.

City claim that Mancini saw some DVDs of him, so I'm not so sure that's a "really good look". :) Marwood's role in transfer dealings for the club is well documented but to the best of my knowledge, Kidd has never had any input into transfer dealings. Mancini wasn't overly big on AJ when he was signed and basically considered him a good British player for the future.

That being said, I think he'll be aiming to use a 4-1-2-1-2 or 4-2-3-1 formation which should allow the more creative players to move forward. Problem is that this formation requires some really good fullbacks which we don't have at the moment. I'm not sure Boateng will be a first choice right away. Boateng has even stated that Mancini figured it would take him several months to adjust to playing in the premier league.

-- Mon Jul 05, 2010 1:36 pm --



Can't say I agree with this line, and especially in the premier league. Unless we actually win the league playing boring defensive football you are always going to have people who will call this stuff crap. If Mancini resorts to this type of play with the squad at his disposal next season, I'm sure the questions about his suitability as manager will only increase.

It reminds me of the New Jersey Devils in the NHL who won a few Stanley Cups playing the "Neutral Zone" trap and were accussed of ruining the sport for everyone else. The hockey was so dull and boring that even the league threatened to outlaw it's use.

LOL. Drama.

cmon, we're nowhere near that bad, not even close to Chelsea in Mourinho's last two seasons, let alone Arsenal in the bad old days.... last season, I don't think we were close to being amongst the worse in the league... not even the worse in the top half. I accept we were more defensive than most, but I think people have unrealistic expectations. With odd exceptions, league matches between top four teams are nearly always complete snooze-fests. The big creative/explosive players are targeted and shut out.

Nobody plays attractive attacking football all the time. Arsenal try to play attractive football, but it doesn't work as often as you might think, they drive their fans nuts because 'they aren't direct enough'. what wins you the game, and is pleasing on the eye one week, is a horror-show the next, and the reason you didn't win.

This season, Utd absolutely stank for a couple of months. Villa's football was mindless, their fans detested it. Liverpool were just horrible to watch. Chelsea have been very poor to watch on several occasions. Even under Hughes, on several occasions we absolutely bombed in possession, and there were quite a few times where we never got going until we went behind. It's just not possible to please everyone all the time.

I can see where you are coming from with regards to Chelsea. I wouldn't stand for us scoring 103 goals in a season, whilst letting in 32 either. How can a team ever expect to compete allowing so many goals. Much better if we could bring the scoring way down and so that we would concede a couple fewer goals like Man U. :)

Kidding aside, my opinion is that there is way too much emphasis placed on how many goals we conceded last year. We only gave up 4 more goals than Arsenal and the Spurs, yet we were at least 10 goals shy of the number scored for 3rd.

Now that we've signed Silva and Toure, I would expect that we would be trying to play the 4-1-2-1-2 or 4-2-3-1 styles that Mancini used at Inter and the same style that Ancelloti currently uses for Chelsea. If Mancini resorts to the same boring 2 defensive mid-fielder shite we played last year than he officially moves into the clueless category for me. :)

 

[Braggster]

I think that's one of those things that get repeated so often everyone think's they're true, but I am not so sure.

How else can you explain José's championship winning sides? Off the top of my head one of them only scored 75 or so goals, with many 1-0s, conceding only 15, and they were the by-word in defensive solidity and being boringly obsessed with tactical discipline.

75 goals really isn't a lot for the champions so I can't accept that you have to have a really attacking mentality to win the league here.

In 2004/5, when they first won the title under Mourinho, they scored 72, which was the second highest after Arsenal's 87 and 14 more than the rags (who were third highest) managed. They conceded 15, 11 less than the rags.

In 2005/6 Chelsea were joint highest scorers (with the rags) on 72 goals. They conceded 22, 3 less than the next best (Liverpool).

Jose had two of the most dominant teams the PL has ever seen, but they have two of the four lowest goals for totals ever achieved by the PL champions.

By the standards of championship winning teams, which obviously tend to have better attacks than almost all the rest by definition, I can't see how you can conclude that they were anything other than defensive. That was also my overwhelming impression when actually watching them.

There are plenty of instances of defensive football working in England, and of tactically astute coaches using the rough and tumble of the league to their advantage by exploiting its lack of tactical sophistication.

It's a bit academic anyway to my mind as Mancini is far from the moat defensive coach in the league today. It's pretty gross group think to view him as a defensive coach IMO, but I know that most disagree with that...

Macmanson: goals against was definitely the bigger problem last season. It's not impossible to win the league scoring 70-odd, as we did, but it is impossible to win it conceding 40-odd.

I'd be wary of comparing us to Arsenal, they were historically high scoring and high conceding for a thrid place team. It's also going to be easier to target a defensive improvement over an attacking one as it's low hanging fruit: a team in our position has no business conceding over 40 goals, end of story

 

[macmanson]

In 2004/5, when they first won the title under Mourinho, they scored 72, which was the second highest after Arsenal's 87 and 14 more than the rags (who were third highest) managed. They conceded 15, 11 less than the rags.

In 2005/6 Chelsea were joint highest scorers (with the rags) on 72 goals. They conceded 22, 3 less than the next best (Liverpool).

Jose had two of the most dominant teams the PL has ever seen, but they have two of the four lowest goals for totals ever achieved by the PL champions.

By the standards of championship winning teams, which obviously tend to have better attacks than almost all the rest by definition, I can't see how you can conclude that they were anything other than defensive. That was also my overwhelming impression when actually watching them.

There are plenty of instances of defensive football working in England, and of tactically astute coaches using the rough and tumble of the league to their advantage by exploiting its lack of tactical sophistication.

It's a bit academic anyway to my mind as Mancini is far from the moat defensive coach in the league today. It's pretty gross group think to view him as a defensive coach IMO, but I know that most disagree with that...

Macmanson: goals against was definitely the bigger problem last season. It's not impossible to win the league scoring 70-odd, as we did, but it is impossible to win it conceding 40-odd.

I'd be wary of comparing us to Arsenal, they were historically high scoring and high conceding for a thrid place team. It's also going to be easier to target a defensive improvement over an attacking one as it's low hanging fruit: a team in our position has no business conceding over 40 goals, end of story

Fair point that conceding 40 goals won't win you the league, but as Chelsea proved, you can concede more than 30 and still win. Hence my argument that whole sale tactical changes to a defense first mentality is not what is needed. Our attack always looked good going forward under Hughes and we had a couple of bad games on defense where we started shipping more than the 1 goal or so we were giving up on average.

As for Chelsea, the PL overall seemed to be lacking in goal scoring, so even having scored only 72 goals, Chelsea still seemed to win most of there games comfortably and If you look at the actual results from the 2005/6 season:

<a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005%E2%80%9306_FA_Premier_League#Results" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005%E2%80 ... ue#Results</a>

There isn't that many 1-0 games and the ones that are, were away games, where playing more defensively is acceptable. Dedicating 2 mids to defense along with 2 CBs and 2 unreliable FBs meant at most we had at most 4 players doing all the attacking. With the attacking options we've added, I seriously hope he still isn't considering hanging 6 back.

And I don't understand those that make the argument that they'd take boring football if it gets us results. With City's talent that would be like having a beautiful girlfriend with huge guns and a nice arse trying to convince you that a wank is just as good as a romp because the end result is all that matters. :) Joga Bonito my friends.

 

[persvenality cult]

let me correct something, Mourinho's two premiership wins were won with the lowest number of goals scored ever, except for arsenal in 97. and when he didn't win, they scored even fewer goals. not once under mourinho did they score more than three goals in a league game. that's despite having the biggest funding ever seen in the game. he systematically sold all the flair players except for Joe Cole. it was ruthless efficiency, admirable, even , but to pretend a handful of overly-defensive performances last year puts us on the same level of defensive emphasis is nonsense.

fuck me, I don't know which is more absurd. Mourinho's Chelsea were an attacking spectacle, or Hughes' team were playing joga bonito and just needed a little tweak. joga bonito? do you have any idea what that means to a brazillian? it's not kick and rush and scoring goals on the break, that's for sure.

that, and trying to take away from mancini any credit for signing attacking players, smacks of desperation. time to let go, and start giving credit where it's due.

 

[TheMightyQuinn]

Bollocks!

Hughes played real football, thrilling end to end stuff with Burnley and Bolton confirmed this and what about that vintage performance of kick and rush we served up at home to Sunderland?

Hughes was a football genius.

 

[macmanson]

let me correct something, Mourinho's two premiership wins were won with the lowest number of goals scored ever, except for arsenal in 97. and when he didn't win, they scored even fewer goals. not once under mourinho did they score more than three goals in a league game. that's despite having the biggest funding ever seen in the game. he systematically sold all the flair players except for Joe Cole. it was ruthless efficiency, admirable, even , but to pretend a handful of overly-defensive performances last year puts us on the same level of defensive emphasis is nonsense.

fuck me, I don't know which is more absurd. Mourinho's Chelsea were an attacking spectacle, or Hughes' team were playing joga bonito and just needed a little tweak. joga bonito? do you have any idea what that means to a brazillian? it's not kick and rush and scoring goals on the break, that's for sure.

that, and trying to take away from mancini any credit for signing attacking players, smacks of desperation. time to let go, and start giving credit where it's due.

Rough day at work? I don't think anybody would claim that Mourhino's Chelsea were an attacking spectacle or that Hughes' team were playing joga bonito. That reference was to how our current team, including new signings, should be playing and something I'm hoping Mancini decides to go for this year. While Chelsea weren't an attacking spectacle, they weren't exactly squeaking by on 1-0 wins the whole time either. The main point is that with the team we have, there is no need to look for 1-0 wins with excessive use of defensive players.

As for giving Mancini credit for attacking players, I would say Silva was "his" signing. That being said, as with clubs like Barclenona, the selection of players is done by committee and guys like Marwood are part of that selection committee. It was that way under Hughes, is that way under Mancini and will be that way under successive managers as well. I would expect that Mancini signings will be mostly flair players and that Marwood will be the one pushing the Milner's of the world.